Saturday, November 6, 2010

Parkland Chinese Restaurant

Parkland Chinese Restaurant
Shop 38 Sunnypark Shopping Centre, corner Mains Road and McCullough Street, Sunnybank



It doesn't take long for word to spread in Brisbane. I heard from a friend that there was a new yum cha restaurant open in the shopping plaza 'across the road from Market Square'. When we went to explore a couple of weeks back, I noted that it was huge, on par with Landmark. I then found out that it was opened up by the owners of Landmark so all that kinda makes sense.



When grandpa wanted a place to host a celebration dinner party, dad suggested Parkland because we're always curious about new Chinese restaurants in Brisbane. We ended up going last Friday night.


My dad is physically incapable of eating late on a weekday night because he gets too hungry. We were all instructed to meet up at 5:45pm on the dot with the special request of pre-ordering all the food so that dishes would start arriving as soon as he got there.


BBQ meat platter

Grandpa chose the seafood banquet (suggested for 6-8 people), plus an extra plate of BBQ meat for dad to have as an appetizer. The platter consisted of the usual culprits: roast duck, BBQ pork and jellyfish. The meat was quite standard. The jellyfish didn't have the crunch you want from something like jellyfish. It failed in the texture department.

Seafood soup

Our first hot dish was a big bowl of seafood soup. It was a thick, clear broth with prawns, shitake mushroom and eggwhite dropped in. There was a small dish of red vinegar to accompany the soup. Simple as it was, I really liked this soup.

Lobster with shallot and ginger

Next was the main event of the evening: wok-tossed lobster. It had a rich ginger and shallot sauce and was served on a bed of egg noodles. In this style of dish, I love the noodles most because it soaks up all the flavors. The lobster flesh was sweet and succulent.

Deep-fried mud crab

We also had mud crab. Usually when we have mud crab at a restaurant, it's cooked the same way as the lobster. This one was deep-fried with a sate-style sauce of dried shrimp and fried onion. I guess the restaurant was trying to avoid repetition. My dad and grandparents really liked this dish but it was a bit dry for me and I prefer the other method of cooking. It was a gorgeous crab though - nice and fleshy.

Then came the rest of the meat dishes. There was also a steamed live fish but my family chewed it up before I had the chance to take a photo. I do recall it was a nice fish though.

Pig trotters (or knuckles)

There was a weird braised pig trotter dish that was served on a gas stove. I'm not sure why they need the flame to keep the dish warm. We did have a plate of raw veggies though... maybe they were supposed to be added in? No one told us anything though so this is all speculative.

Spicy chicken

One of the dishes was a Sichuan-style spicy chicken. It's lightly fried with a dry batter and tossed with lots of chili. I liked this dish but Byron thought it could do with some sauce element.

Stir-fried beef

We also had a stir-fried beef dish. The beef was extremely tender and had a strong peppercorn flavor. This one goes well with rice.

Green veggies in garlic sauce

To satisfy the bowels, we also had one vegetable dish. I don't know what the leaves were of... Chinese spinach?? It had a nice flavor but the kitchen was a bit rough with the selection. Dad picked out a few stems that were as thick and inedible as bamboo husk.

We finished off with some complimentary dessert (a sweet bean stew) and a plate of melon and oranges. Nothing spectacular there. No one liked the sweet stew except for Byron who had 3 bowls. :)

The service at Parkland was WAAAAYYY better than most other Chinese restaurants I've been to in Australia. I guess a lot of that has to do with the fact that it's new and even at the peak time, wasn't at a full capacity. The food was on the most part quite acceptable. I wouldn't mind going back to check out their yum cha.

17 comments:

  1. i was just here last week too..because of those yumcha rumors..hahah! the service is definitely better. but some of the yumcha dishes weren't exactly the same as landmark, some of the ones i had were very salty..dislike! still, i'd come back for the yumcha because the service is great and the line is never massively long like landmark ==

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  2. Hi Kylie...
    Maybe they're still finding their feet? We'll see how everything is as time goes by :).

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  3. That looks like ung choi. Did it have a hollow stem? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipomoea_aquatica

    It probably wouldn't be other types of Chinese spinach if the stem was fibrous... ung choi sometimes have tough stems...

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  4. "To satisfy the bowels" - LOL!

    It puzzles me that you have dinner at a yum cha place (as with Big Gun)! :P

    I've heard the yum cha at Parkland isn't very good, I'm not sure if I'll bother trying it until I hear otherwise. :-/ That beef you had looks pretty yummy though!

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  5. Hi Bonnie...
    I think you're right. It is ung choi. We have it at home sometimes though cooked differently.

    Hi Lara...
    Is Parkland just a yunmcha place do you think? I categorized it as a general Hong Kong style restaurant. We go to those kinds of places e.g. Landmark, Marigold (before it burnt down) and The Manor for regular food (as in, large amount of dishes to share) sometimes at dinner time. I'll probably try the yum cha sooner or later and give you some feedback :).

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  6. Well, you called it a "yum cha" restaurant! :)

    I understand that any of those yum cha places are HK style restaurants, but to me, having good yum cha doesn't mean that their other food is good too (and possibly the converse for this restaurant). So because of that, I usually wouldn't order from the a la carte menu at a yum cha place, I'd just go somewhere else... maybe I'm missing out!

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  7. Hi again Lara...
    Hmm, I see! I think of them as 'Cantonese' restaurants, which usually means yum cha during the day and a la carte at night. Where do you go for a la carte HK-style food? The places I go to all have yum cha during the day hahahah. Maybe they're all the bad ones!

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  8. I've heard mixed comments about this place both for yum cha and dinner, although I haven't been there myself. That spicy chicken looks potent!

    Time will tell how Parkland will turn out. Landmark is more consistent and is not bad for service once you "bribe" a few head waiter/ waitresses during Chinese New Year with a few red pockets.

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  9. Nice Information and really helpful. I have also subscribed the RSS of the website to get regular updates, Looking more information on the same!

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  10. Hi Steph...
    The chicken looks chili-loaded but it's not that bad. It's that numbing spice, not the eye-watering kind.

    I think Parkland is worth a try regardless of what reviews you hear. The environment is quite nice.

    And I totally didn't know that about bribing the waiters :p. Sneaky hehe.

    Hi Stephen...
    Thanks for subscribing to my blog! I've been slow these days with study but it should pick up again soon. Keep checking back.

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  11. Hi Cora,

    I really like China Sea at Milton, which is Cantonese a la carte but no yum cha. I'm not sure I can think of any other Cantonese restaurants I frequent.

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  12. Hi Lara...
    OH yes I've heard about there and driven past a fair few times to. I think it's time I ventured outside of Sunnybank hahahah :D.

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  13. I disagreed about the chicken, it was quite spicy! And too dry!

    The stir fried beef was cooked to perfection however needed a sauce to acompany

    Lobster was probably the hero

    I felt that deep fried mud crab kinda destroyed the delicasy of crustacean

    Seafood soup was also quite nice. I could have had the entire bowl (Not bowel)

    Veges were veges

    Entree was good bar the jellyfish, I thoguht the big gun jellyfish was nicer, edible at least

    All in all I think it was a pretty impressive spread. If you wanted to treat someone i would recomend, but I think improvements could be made. I would go back if opportunity arose.

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  14. Hi um... "bytron" (lol)...

    Re: chicken. What about keep it dry but add dipping sauce! And that was not spicy. Tsk tsk.

    Agree about lobster & crab.

    We can make our own seafood soup. And in response to who'll cut up the prawns etc into small pieces well Obviously it'll be me, until you decide I'm too slow/uneven/both slow AND uneven... Then you'll take over.

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  15. This restaurant branched from Landmark ( which is a really horrible restaurant, bad service , bad yum cha, the only thing that really puzzled me is that Landmark is really busy and popular, it is like people are glutton for punishment to waste their money on bad food and bad service) I have only been to parkland for yum cha, food is bit better than Landmark, service is still terrible!!!! If you want really nice yum cha , go to Top One at Australia fair at Gold Coast, very very nice food esp if you go early like 11.30am where all the food are freshly cooked, service is unusually good for a restaurant that serves Yum Cha.It is definitely worth the drive if you are at Brisbane- We have 3 young children under 6 n we would still drive all the way from Brisbane to Gold Coast for Top one!!!!
    Proper Chinese dining, my husband and I much prefer Chinese garden at Logan Rd( near Garden City) The service is good if you get there early like before 6.30pm, as it gets really really busy after 7pm.
    2 seconds ago · Like

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  16. Parkland does yum cha at night too now. I find most of the dishes are just as good as the ones in Landmark. The plus side is you usually order it so it's all nice and fresh. The service is better than Landmark too as there are less customers. However for some wierd reason, I found that their chilli sauce for the yum cha contiment as not as spicy as the one in Landmark.

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  17. WORM IN SOUP!!! so disgusted by this plus POOR service. Took the manager 2 minutes to say sorry and that was it. Can't believe this ridiculous! Never going back to Parkland and Landmark (same owners).

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